Wrapping sheets for products such as fast food items, and especially related fast food items such as sandwiches, burritos, tacos and the like, are commonly employed. Most commonly, sheet material wrappers formed of paper, aluminum foil and aluminum foil-paper laminates are employed.
Such wrapping sheets are normally printed on the exposed surface when enclosing a product to identify the product contained therein. This may be accomplished by color coding, pictures, wording or a combination of these.
Being both space and cost conscious, the fast food operation with an ever-increasing proliferation of products is unhappy with individual wrapping sheets for each product. Such fast food operators, therefore, desire wrapping sheets which may be used to contain one of several products, while at the same time allowing both the fast food operation's personnel and the consumer the ability to identify the product within the wrapping sheet.
One proposal for such a wrapping sheet is found in U.S. Pat. No. 2,893,876. In this patent, the sheet is printed with indicia for the various products that may be contained within the sheet. The store personnel, after wrapping, pierces the area of indicia relating to the product contained with a toothpick. This required additional material is not compatible with the storage and cost considerations of many fast food outlets.
It has also been proposed to provide wrapping materials in which a different product identification is printed in each of the four corners of the generally rectangular wrapping sheet. In this system, the product is wrapped diagonally, such that the loose corner resulting from the wrapping operation bears the indicia of the product wrapped therein. While such a wrapping sheet provides the necessary identification function, such sheets must be produced to fine registration tolerances in the printing and cutting operations in order that the indicia is provided in the proper locations on each sheet. This increases the cost of the manufacture and thus the cost of the wrapping sheet to the fast food outlet.
There remains a need, therefore, for a wrapping sheet material which allows for multiple product identification and which does not require registration during printing, thus reducing its cost to the purchaser.
It is thus the primary objective of the present invention to produce a wrapping material for multiple products which allows for ease of identification of the product contained while at the same time not requiring registration during production of the wrap.